


In the Cards

by thedevilchicken



Category: Monkey Island
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Yuletide gift for tahanrien! A little slice of backstory for Guybrush, and the Voodoo Lady. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>She's always there, just like she's always been</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Cards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tahanrien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahanrien/gifts).



She knows he thinks he was born in England. 

He thinks he was born in the south, by the coast, in a port town that was always heaving with visitors. He remembers cobbled streets and the way he could see the masts of the tall ships everywhere he went, how he'd watch them weigh anchor from his bedroom window or from down by the dock where the fishermen would land their catch. Most of the ships were merchantmen of various sizes, but the occasional navy vessel would limp in from battle in need of provisions or for a few brief days of shore leave for the men. The crews were essentially the same, except for the officers and even them to some extent, so the town was always rowdy. Guybrush thinks he felt lucky to live there. 

The streets were always full of seamen, blustering and sometimes drunk, like the ones he'd see stumbling into or out of the taverns down the street from his father's shop. He was meant to be in bed by sundown in the summer but sometimes his dad would let him sneak into the tavern when he delivered finished clothes, sit at the bar and ask the sailors there to tell him stories. On the whole they weren't exactly hard to talk into it; with a bit of liquor in them, and often quite a lot, the words flowed pretty freely and he didn't have to win a hard-fought round of insult arm-wrestling. Sometimes they were even comprehensible.

They told him tales of fearsome pirates and of buried treasure, about the whistle of wind through the rigging and the fair Caribbean isles where a man could make his fortune as easily as spit, if only he weren't afraid of voodoo or a short drop. He'd lie awake in bed at night and he'd imagine it all so vividly, the warm sand and the hot sun and the clear blue sea, the glint of gold against his palm where X marked the spot. He thinks that's where his dream came from: from the taverns in the town where he grew up.

He's half right, at least. Some of what he thinks is true. The rest is what she told him.

***

He used to walk in his sleep. 

" _Poze san ou, monchè_ ," she'd tell him each time he startled awake in her room. " _Ou senesòf_. You're safe and sound." He'd act like he wasn't scared at all, like everything was fine though the 5-year-old Guybrush wasn't fond of waking in dark places. She'd light her candles by the bed and he'd sit with her on the wooden seat there under the little window. Her sparse little room in the eaves had the best view but the stairs leading up to it were treacherously steep. She couldn't send him back down in the dark, and so he'd stay with her and watch the shadows on the walls. She'd make them dance for him.

"You could always tell me a story," he'd say, like that was for her and not for him. She guesses she's always liked to tell him stories, never said no as they sat there in the night, as the years went by. She'd tell him about the sea and about her people, about all of the islands they inhabited. Sometimes she told him the tales of old Ireland and sometimes she spoke of the new Caribbean but it was always fire and adventure and justice in the end because that was how the loa willed it. She told him about the island of Flotsam where the winds blew so strongly that those who landed there could never leave. She told him about the Jerkbait Islands and Spinner Cay where the Vaycaylians lived, though he'd always be somewhat confused by them, to her endless amusement. And she told him about the pirates. Those were the tales he loved to hear the best. 

In the daytime she was his governess. It was strange, and everyone who was anyone there in the town remarked on it: the Threepwoods' son had a Caribbean slave for a teacher! His dad was a tailor, a very good one at that, the one who served all the best clientele for miles around though they did love to gossip about him. Guybrush was always well-dressed, shoe buckles always shined, and when he went around the town with his beaming smile and his dark-skinned governess he would cause quite the stir. She remembers fondly how she let them all believe she was the slave and not the master. They had no idea. 

Still, she taught him English and she taught him French and Latin, taught him Literature and History, Mathematics and all of the things that a well-to-do merchant's son should learn. He was rarely an attentive student, fidgeted through his classes and there were certain things he simply refused to learn - when was he ever going to need to recite poetry by heart or play the fife? - but he was more than smart enough when he applied himself to practical problems. And he threw himself into the _other_ things she taught him, the things his parents would quietly overlook. They were always discreet.

Some summer days, year upon year, they'd take a long, long walk along the coast and they'd go into the sea together. The water in the bay was calm and each time he'd hold his breath for just a little longer, waving at her as their hair swayed up around their heads. Sometimes they'd weight their feet a fraction and they'd walk a short way together beneath the water, then dry out on the beach in the summer sun. He could hold his breath for ten minutes by the time he was twelve years old. She was proud of him. She told him so, and he smiled his best smile for hours though his parents didn't understand at dinner. 

He played with voodoo dolls in his younger days, in his sister's dollhouse. They made them out of scraps of fabric from his father's shop, from hair and teeth and chips of bone and he never once balked at digging up graves with her in the middle of the night. He remembers that he had a sister but she'd died before he was born; all her things were still there in the house just as they were when she was living, in a room all covered in dust, with a little painting of her sitting there on the dresser. His parents never allowed the maid to go inside. His mother pretended not to notice when he left his footprints on the dusty floor, just made him wash his hands before dinner. His father turned a judicious blind eye. They were sad and kind and loving and could deny him not one thing.

Their treasure hunts were legendary. Her clues were obscure and she'd involve the whole town if she could, with his parents' help. They'd range around the town and surrounding countryside, villages and woods and a few small islands there just off the coast. They'd take days to solve and Guybrush always won. He had an excellent head for lateral thinking: he was the only one who figured out that the mayor's guard dogs turned from vicious man-eaters to fluffy balls of joy demanding belly rubs at the mention of the word _gesundheit_ , or that winning the local cheese-rolling festival would lead to the next summer's treasure. He was a natural.

She let him deal the cards sometimes when she read them in the smoky room above a less than sanitary harbourside inn. There were girls for hire down the corridor but her skills were rather more diverse if still a poorly-kept secret. Men and women, rich and poor, came to her to hear their fortunes and she told them, truths wreathed in riddles for solving. The good Christians clutched the crosses at their throats and they disbelieved, but the saints were in her magic, too. But the sailors believed, the ones that had come in from the west, from Nassau and Port Royal and Tortuga. She painted her face with a skull and they looked at her with a kind of disconcerted reverence. Guybrush sat at her elbow; they looked at him the exact same way. 

"Will I be a pirate?" he asked her, as she dealt his cards one night, up in her room. 

"You will be a mighty pirate," she confirmed. 

"Will I find buried treasure?"

"You will find the greatest treasure of all."

"Will I be famous, too?"

"Your name will be known."

He was pleased enough with what she'd said. He believed. All she had to do then was make it true.

***

Back then, when he was still a boy, she saw Elaine in the cards when she read for him one night. She saw their children, saw their grandchildren, innumerable descendants with a hint of his eyes or his nose or his unenviable singing voice, his smile or his inability to talk to women that somehow hadn't quite managed to stamp out the Threepwood line completely. Some would keep his name but most of them would be Marleys. Some would remain in the tri-island area but most would leave, head to Europe or the Americas, join navies, dive for salvage. They'd live good lives and if they delved into their history enough they'd have a tall tale to tell of their famous pirate ancestor. She'd watch over them all, in her way, though they'd never know it. 

Back then, she saw his paths and she told him she saw a great rivalry, saw great love, saw great adventure. He was excited for it. She knew it was time, and so she stole him away, brought him there to the Caribbean. He doesn't remember, thinks his parents left, thinks he stowed away on a ship and emerged in Tortuga an inch away from scurvy and with a new appreciation for rat vichyssoise. 

Today, she deals the cards to read his future and she sees his life stretch out before him. She reads the cards and she sees his choices spread like ripples in the water. All the possibilities are right there, waiting to be realised or to be passed by; some lead to ruin and some lead to fame. She just needs to gently steer their course, the way she's done through his whole life to date. 

He was born in a graveyard on Scabb Island not twenty years ago, and she was there, tending to the dead. His mother lay sobbing and prayed that her son be watched over, offered her own life to see it done. It seemed like a fair enough deal. She accepted.

The Baron dug the girl's grave and little Guybrush survived the night in her arms. She took him across the seas with her, half a world away from the place where his mother had died just like his pirate father before her, to where his foster parents would love him like he was their own, like the child they'd longed for since their baby girl had died. They were grateful. They never asked questions. And the first name he said was his nursemaid's, his governess's: he called her Maman Brigitte. 

She hears the tinkle of the bell as he walks into her shop there on Mêlée Island; she'll have many more such establishments in the years to come, right where he'll need them to be. She listens and she waits as he picks up the chicken and waits for him to notice her, and she smiles because he'll need that later, though for the moment he'll have no earthly idea of why anyone could ever need it. There'll be a lot of that in his future. She's prepared him for it well.

He won't remember her when they meet, in a few seconds' time, but she knows that's all for the best; she can't intervene with LeChuck directly, he made his own binding deal with her husband, but Guybrush can do it: the price is that their connection must go unseen. Or maybe they won't meet right now, and that will be his choice, though in the future their meetings will be inevitable. He has free will, of course, and she'll watch over him always, but that does not mean he'll be free from influence. She doesn't have to tell the truth. That wasn't part of the deal.

He'll let her guide his every step, and he will never know why. 

"What may I help you with, son?" she asks. She's pleased to see him. She already knows what he'll say - perhaps he's not quite a mighty pirate yet, but there's still time. She has all the time in the world to make that happen.

She'll always be there with him. Just like she always has been.

**Author's Note:**

> Haitian Creole translations (all apologies for any mistakes!):  
> Poze san ou, monchè - calm down, my dear  
> Ou senesòf - you're safe (and sound)
> 
> And, if you're at all interested in Maman Brigitte, I'd have a look [here](http://www.rootswithoutend.org/racine125/goddess.html) and [here](http://www.thaliatook.com/AMGG/mamanbrijit.php)!


End file.
